The Graduate School with the help from us submitted a GradImpact story on one of our Michigan Tech alums and veterans, Jeffrey Brookins, entitled: Finding a Path from Afghanistan to Materials Science. The submission was chosen and published on November 16, 2018. Hope you will enjoy reading it.

Prof. Jarek Drelich was invited to Zhengzhou in China to attend the Talent Recruitment & Project Matchmaking Event for Innovation and Development conference (October 27-28, 2018). The meeting was a high-level, large-scale talents recruitment event hosted by the Henan Provincial Committee, the People’s Government of Henan Province, and Western Returned Scholars Association. The conference was committed to putting the strategy of reinvigorating Henan through human resource development into action. Themed with “Embrace Talents Worldwide to Power the Future of Central Plains,” it aimed to build a platform for Henan Province to promote talent policies, showcase talent achievements, recruit more talents and advance projects cooperation. During this meeting, Prof. Drelich signed an intent of collaboration with Zhengzhou Huaxiang Refractories Co. Ltd on a project related to development and testing of novel porous materials for environmental cleaning, one of a few projects selected and approved by government of the Henan province. He also visited the company to discuss possible future directions of collaboration.

The SURFI Team welcomes a new addition to our team, Donghui Wang. Donghui has arrived from the School of Resources and Civil Engineering at Northeastern University in P.R. China in a middle of October. He will explore fundamentals of hematite flotation in the presence of quartz and magnetite by exploring water-mineral interactions in the presence and absence of flotation reagents.

Prof. Jarek Drelich attended the XVIth International Conference on Surface Forces that took place this year in Kazan, Russia. He delivered a keynote address entitled Direct Measurements of Liquid Adhesion with Solids: Gateway to a Multi-Faceted Understanding of Contact Angles. He also presented a poster prepared by Georgia Hurchalla and entitled Water-Repellent Legs of Water Insects.
The meeting covered new scientific developments in the area of colloid and surface science from chemistry to physics and engineering with the emphasis on the fundamentals of surface interactions including wetting. This series of meetings was initiated in 1960 by famous Russian scientist academician B.V. Derjaguin.
The Conference program included seven keynote lectures, four days of oral presentations, and two poster sessions. The meeting took place in a center of tourist downtown of Kazan, and program included a tour to Sviyazhsk island.
Beside strong scientific program, attractive location, this meeting solidified a collaboration between SURFI and Russian Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations to Georgia Hurchalla for successfully defending her MS Thesis on Effect of Hierarchical Structure and Orientation on Water – Repellant Legs of Water-Walking Insects! Georgia will leave SURFI team in August heading to industry.

Congratulations to Jeff Brookins for successfully defending his MS Thesis on Development and Characterization of Biodegradable Zinc Vascular Ligation Clips! Jeff leaves us this week to start his PhD program at the University of Tennessee.

The review papers entitled Hydrophilic and Superhydrophilic Surfaces and Materials, published in Soft Matter in 2011, was marked again this year as Highly Cited Paper by Thomson Reuters in its Web of Science. This highly cited paper received enough citations third year in a raw to place it in the top 1% of the academic field of Materials Science based on a highly cited threshold for the field and publication year.

Surface Innovations Team welcomes a new member, Dr. Malgorzata Sikora-Jasinska. Dr. Sikora-Jasinska received her double PhD degree at Politecnico de Milano in Italy (Department of Mechanical Engineering) and University Laval, Canada (Department of Mining, Metallurgical, and Materials Engineering). Her doctoral research program was on development of Fe-based composites by powder metallurgy for cardiovascular implant applications. She also contributed to development and testing of Zn-based bioalloys during her PhD program. Dr. Sikora-Jasinska will help us to develop new Mg and Zn-based alloys and to improve the methods of corrosion evaluation of biodegradable metals by assessing biologically and microbiologically induced degradation properties.